The Third Doctrinal War -- Stardock, Reiche/Ford, and Star Control

Games
811

Nightgaunt moved this discussion out of the SC 3 thread specifically to separate it from the company goings-on in the creation and development of the game itself. It was a courtesy. Brad eventually excused himself from this thread, and it became a place for people to follow this legal battle. If things sometimes feel more biased against Stardock, well, such is the nature of these things. It’s how they go. It’s quite easy to find Stardock’s point of view on these matters outside of this thread. That’s part of having good lawyers and professional PR. And more than infrequently, those points are brought here and discussed pretty rationally.

And while it isn’t at all any violation of forum rules, having someone who works for one of the principals in this litigation – and who specifically works in an area that may fall under the umbrella of PR and company communication and outreach – show up on this forum for the sole purpose of arguing (and in a rather … leading… way) Stardock’s side of things feels contrary to the spirit of this thread, I suppose.

It’d be another thing if it was someone who wasn’t affiliated with Stardock presenting this viewpoint.
It’d be another if Rhonin was a member of this community who posted in other threads and was someone with even a marginal presence here.

This just feels…weird.

That said, that’s just my view. Carry on and as you were!

812

Personally, I’d welcome the participation of someone with a better understanding of Stardock’s position. My only ask would be that you avoid the behavior that some Reddit posters have exhibited where they say “I believe X, but I can’t tell you why because I’m under NDA”. Please only make arguments that you can defend without the use of privileged information.

However, Tom did ask Brad to curtail his participation, and I don’t know whether that request would extend to other official Stardock affiliates.

That quote wasn’t from me; it was from Lakstoties. I think a more precise paraphrase would be that UQM’s license doesn’t cover trademarks. However, that doesn’t preclude the ability of the UQM project itself to hold a trademark. Brad has claimed that because UQM isn’t incorporated, it can’t own a trademark, but binding 9th CIrcuit case law seems to say otherwise:

If P&F had worked on the game in any way while employed by Activision, they would probably have given Activision ownership rights over it. They had only just announced that Activision was letting them go on leave to start work on the game when the legal fight broke out. So they are about where Stardock was in 2013. They probably have some ideas, sure, but those are undoubtedly going to need to need a lot of design review, and they’d probably be spoliery anyway - I don’t think I’d want to see them. And I certainly don’t expect them to continue work on the game while they aren’t certain that they’ll be able to release it on their own terms.

I’m curious as well; I looked for the exact date, but wasn’t able to track it down.

I’ll agree that it’s possible that P&F moved their announcement up by a few weeks after the dispute with Brad broke out, so that exact timing could be questioned. However, the 25th anniversary suffices to explain the general proximity of the two events, without needing to infer that P&F had any ill-intent prior to the fight.

On the first, it boils down to the fair use question: “Do P&F have a fair use right to call GotP a “Sequel to Star Control 2”, because it continues the storyline from that game?” The two sides are in direct opposition on this point.

On the second, my sense is that in those paragraphs, P&F are trying to lay groundwork for a “Substantial Similarity” argument. That is, none of those singularly would be a problem, but enough of them together cross the line.

IMHO, P&F did push the line further than they should have on some of these points. “Super Melee”, for example, is too generic, and obviously you can’t copyright general gameplay aspects like exploration and resource gathering. “Tzo Crystals”, OTOH, seem to have been a unique invention from SC2, and I think Stardock shouldn’t be using them.

The user content is a tricky issue. I think that P&F have a reasonable desire not to see Stardock’s engine used to recreate parts of SC2, but banning all user-created content would clearly be going too far. I think that some kind of DMCA-like process to provide for takedowns on infringing content might be the way to go here.

I hear you; went through it myself not long ago. I think the limits go away in a week or so.

813

At least they were up front about their connection. I see no problem with it.

814

I’d welcome input from someone at Stardock as long as they are polite and don’t dodge the tough questions.

For example, how do you justify the public position that Stardock is not trying to prevent P&F from making a games on their own when the settlement demands included a literal demand that they not even work on a game for five years? Also given the attempts to trademark every unique name in the games and the recent insistence that P&F must license from Stardock all those names if they want to use those even if they have desire to use the Star Control title. It would seem that the only way P&F could make a game would be under the control of Stardock.

How do you justify the attempt to trademark all the names when the original agreements clearly and specifically say that Paul owns things like the alien names? How is this not a blatant IP grab? It would seem Stardock has a cafeteria interpretation of the original agreement where it is picking things they like to claim are still in force and completely ignoring other parts that they don’t like.

Do you really not see the hypocrisy in suing them once they announce their game and then in PR efforts try to use the line that they have produced no public information about what they have worked on against them?

How do you justify all Stardock prior statements that P&F owned the original IP and Stardock’s attempts to license the very IP that Stardock now claims it owns.

How do you justify literally calling Paul and Fred liars and frauds in public and in legal documents and encouraging members of your private community to do the same? I realize the public line is “they didn’t have the copyrights” but this ignores the fact that when they needed to they have indeed gotten all the paperwork together to show they have the copyrights (remember a copyright exists at the moment of creation, not registration). There is also direct testimony from one of the people who was there, that Stardock is fully aware of since it appeared on their forums, that clearly says that Paul and Fred were the minds behind it all.

This new line that they are liars and defrauded Accolade and somehow deprived the real owners of being able to profit from their work. The counterclaim literally argues they concocted a nefarious scheme to defraud everyone. To me this is so ridiculous and offensive. Especially considering Stardock while using the “real copyright holders” as a cudgel is still trying to grab the IP that these “real copyright holders” would own? Finally on this point, when your CEO had a god damn cow over a tweet saying he’s a liar and trying to steal the IP and evidently thought it was beyond the pale how it is not hypocritical to now level far far worse accusations against P&F. Can you not see how this turns a lot of people off.

Here’s the first hand account I mentioned above

This is Greg Johnson, thanks for the nice article! I did indeed help out on Star Control II (And the original Star Control One Melee), and was the designer of StarFlight. It’s great to see Star Control II getting appreciated. It was quite an achievement for it’s day. One comment I’d like to make is that this is a fine article but it leaves out a couple important things, first is that is the genius of the engineering of this game was all Fred Ford, a one-man engineering marvel. We used to joke about how Fred was really an android - he is so amazing. Fred can code and carry on a conversation with you at the same time - no joke - and he never misses a step. Likewise it doesn’t give enough clear credit to the creative genius of this entire Universe and all of it’s amazing character, content and game play, which comes straight from the fascinating and sometimes rather bizarre mind of Paul Reiche III. Paul and I shared a tiny office in those early days, and then, once Fred joined Paul we were across the hall from each other… and we took long walks everyday in the Novato hills as I listened to Paul coming up with the characters and story of Star Control. It’s Paul’s delightful humor and crazy story telling that make this game what it is. His warm and playful personality shines through all of it. Paul also mentored me and guided me as I built Starflight, and as I entered the game industry 35 years ago, and then I helped out a bit on his game mostly doing art and a little of the dialogue writing with his direction. Those were really the garage shop days of game making. Oh and I also roomed with Iain McCaig in those days - an amazing talent too, and a great guy. This article says Iain did writing for the game but I don’t believe he did - just some concept art. Anyway hats off to both Paul and Fred. Thanks for giving us an amazing and memorable game!

815

Also to give a sample of what the Stardock fan community is putting out below is IMHO the most hilarious and egregious example. There’s also a guy on reddit who keeps making outrageous claims which he says are based on having secret direct knowledge that could only come from someone who is a party of the case. It is known that Stardock has a private fan base under NDA that they are feeding information to and encouraging to spread that info. On reddit for example the “they are incredibly rich so they have no right to complain or try to raise defense funds” has been spouted by people who have in the past mentioned belonging to the founders program.

I hate to rain on the parade but a bit of insider information before you drink their kool-aid. Paul and Fred, a couple of millionaires currently working on Spyro remake for Activision (which in a twist of irony, the original creator of the Spyro character is upset they never contacted him to tell him about) are not actually asking fans for money to cover their legal expenses… They are asking them to cover their legal loses.

The 2 million dollar figure is the expected court-ordered cost they will be expected to pay out of their personal funds when they lose the lawsuit. Just to be clear, this isn’t even a question, they have already lost this lawsuit. The court’s discovery has turned up P&F apparently did not own any of the original copyright when they filed the initial DCMA’s that triggered this whole affair.

Oh if you missed that part of the story, in incredibly poor form and with a complete lack of tact, P&F filled DCMA takedown requests for the classic star control games having them removed from steam and gog, including SC3 which they had nothing to do with, this is what kicked off the legal action forcing Stardock to respond to protect the trademark.

Stardock acquired the Trademarks from Atari in 2013 and have spent the last 5 years working on Star Control Origins and contacted P&F to try to get them to encourage them to start making a sequel (because sadly Stardock were actually huge fans and bought the license in the first place because they wanted to see the franchise revived). If they didn’t want to work under Stardock or license from them they were willing to give them the Trademark at cost, the entire thing, with the small provision they get to complete the game (SC:O) they’d already invested millions in working on. P&F refused stating Activision wouldn’t give them the time.

This came to a head when shortly after the 25th anniversary of Star Control, with SC: Origins making headlines and gearing up for launch in less than a year, Paul and Fred released a press release announcing their new game Star Control Ghost of the Precursors out of now where, heralding it as the true successor of the Star Control franchise, while using the Star Control: Origins box art as the promotional image for the game (it is also worth noting that to date we have seen nothing in the form of plans or work done on GotP).

Stardock, of course, reached out and tried to find a middle ground where P&F could make the true sequel to Ur-Quan masters while still allowing SD to finish their game, we’ve seen the emails for these exchanges and basically, it boils down to Fred not wanting to come to the party (Paul seems more amicable and pretty much just wants more Star Control, but he is Tails to Freds Sonic, Robin to his Batmans etc). Then P&F dropped the DCMA filings out of nowhere forcing SD to counter sue.

The justifications for the DCMA’s was Paul and Fred claimed there was a contract clause that in the event of bankruptcy the copyright (not the trademark) reverts to the original creators. The validity of that claim is still up in the air but recent finding show even if that is correct, the original creators the copyright reverts to is not Paul and Fred.

Take the Orz race as an example, Leonard Robel claims to have done the Orz Captain art and also apparently came up with the Orz ship’s powers art. Greg Hammond apparently designed the Orz ship. Greg Johnson did the writing for the Orz. Between the 3 of them, those are the original copyright holders for the Orz. They were working under Accolade at the time (same and Paul and Fred) contracted to make the game for Accolade who owned all the rights until this contract clause allegedly triggered.

What copyright do Paul and Fred have? In theory, Fred did the bulk of the programming, but “lost” the source code (to be fair this did happen a lot in that era) to prove it. So what they have a sketchbook of concepts and idea, a lot of which was not actually used. Recently (In April, very late in the piece and well after the court case got into full swing) Paul and Fred scrambled to contact as many of the original team members as possible to try and buy up as much of the scattered copyright as possible. Suffice to say Stardock was pissed to learn this when it comes up in the discovery and has also made a move to acquire as much of the original copyright as it can so they can use it (So the fans can see the original aliens in their games but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if spite is involved).

That’s a bit of a moot point though as regardless of who ends up with the copyright going forward, all of Paul and Freds claims at the start of the trial have more or less been proven false. Stardock is indisputably the legitimate trademark holder. Paul and Fred are looking at fines for false DCMA filings and a pretty solid slander charges levied at them to boot…

Oh yeah, the slander charges. I forgot to mention, when the insane decisions of Paul and Fred lead their lawyer to throw up their arms in disgust and quit, and most other lawyers they contacted turned them down because of how badly they ballsed up the case… They instead hired a PR firm to spin things (Singer) who decided to paint Stardock as “thieves” and “liars” and other standard FUD tactics.

It’s worth noting that Paul and Fred aren’t an underdog in this story. They are a pair of Producers/Directors at Activision, one of the biggest publishers in the world and the personal net worth of each of them is in the millions. Meanwhile, Stardock has barely pushed its head above “indie” status as a developer/publisher.

Stardock has invested all it’s chips in trying to revive the Star Control franchise, as fans more than as an investment. But if you want to draw a comparison to RG and Portalarium it would be that if things had gone differently, despite following the law and acting in good faith trying license and make their game, if Paul and Fred had their way, the majority of staff at Stardock would be getting laid off in Septemeber.

I used to be a fan of Paul and Fred. And we the fans could have had 2 great Star Control games if they wanted to allow it. But what I’ve learnt about them in past couple of months is they are glory hounds who basically claimed the credit for a bunch of other peoples work and would rather cut their own nose off in spite of the fans. Even if they were willing to go the no such thing as bad PR route and announce a kickstarter to fund their game (and there’s nothing stopping making their game under the name urquan masters even if they don’t want to deal with Stardock) I might have considered backing. Instead, a pair of millionaires turned to their fans and asked for them to cover the damages of a legal battle they started and already lost.

Never meet your heroes.

816

Heh. Big contrast between the picture that post paints and the one Greg Johnson paints.

817

The sad thing is, I’m only really interested in a good game.

Neither side is covering themselves in glory here…

818

Fair enough. I’ve got very little dog in this particular hunt, but find the events themselves fascinating.

819

Some more questions I’d really like to see answered. Stardock’s stance is that it only recently found out that people other than Paul and Fred worked on the game and is using this sudden revelation to negate the company’s own prior statements about P&F owning, well, anything.

Do you seriously expect anyone to believe that nobody who works for Stardock ever saw the credits in SC1 or SC2 before the lawsuit was filed? Given that the CEO himself talks about what a fan of the games he is, are we really expected to believe that he never ever in his whole life until after the lawsuit was filed laid eyes on the credits?

Also given that those credits exist and Stardock obviously knows about them now that they claim to have suddenly realized other people worked on the game, how can the claim be made that is in the complaints that P&F called themselves the “sole” creators of the games for all this time? The game was launched with credits listing other people who were on the team. This would clearly show that P&F did not claim to be the “sole” creators as Stardock contends.

821

That is a blatant misrepresentation of that section. It is not a list of things they claim exclusive ownership of but a list of elements that demonstrate substantial similarity.

822

Folks, how about we not pour several months’ worth of accumulated irritation over Stardock’s behavior on the new poster all at once, especially since they are currently unable to make very many posts or links? :-)

823

I don’t plan to rely on non-public information, that would be unsporting. However there are some things I can’t talk about, namely settlement offers.

Apologies, it can get a little confusing to tell who posted what when they don’t have avatars and I should have paid more attention. And among the many people that have worked on UQM which of them can claim a trademark?

P&F became employees for Activision in 2005, when Toys for Bob was bought. While I can’t claim to know how it is in the US, does a company have that much control over what someone does in their free time? The work I do for Stardock is in my free time, I have a day job besides it and there is nothing my employer could do to stop it. Well that and they are also a pretty nice guy.

Except P&F new in advance when the open beta for Fleet Battles would go live because Brad told them.

Here it is described the fair use of trademarks. There are two types of fair use: descriptive fair use and nominative fair use.

Descriptive fair use is when you use another’s trademark to describe the user’s products or services, rather than to indicate a source of the products or services.

Nominative fair use is the use of another’s trademark to refer to the trademark owner’s actual goods and services associated with the mark. I will quote the next part since I can’t word it more clearly; “Nominative fair use generally is permissible as long as (1) the product or service in question is not readily identifiable without use of the trademark, (2) only so much of the mark as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service is used and (3) use of the mark does not suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner.”

Now under which category would calling your product “direct sequel” or “true sequel” fall under?

824

He’s being paid to come here and represent his company’s side. There are lots of questions about their actions. He began with some bold claims. I think everyone has every right to question those claims and request answers to their questions about the company he is being paid to represent. Getting a load of questions and comments could only be expected in this situation.

827

Keep in mind, Elestan created his account 3 weeks ago here specifically to discuss this topic. The main difference between Elestan and Rhonin is that Rhonin announced his biases from the start.

As Rhonin mentioned, he has a regular job. His part-time CM duties at Stardock are to help out with the communities that tend to involve Stardock (like Island Dog who is also here). No one is telling him what to do or what to say.

I have no knowledge of what Elestan’s relationship is with Paul and Fred other than that he’s in contact with them and is the one maintaining the Paul/Fred slanted FAQ and can be found across Reddit advocating on Paul and Fred’s behalf as well as on UQM.

I think it would be safe to say that Elestan has put in more time into the dispute than anyone at Stardock has (myself included).

Like you said, it’s one thing if members of the QT3 are discussing a topic. You’e been here almost as long as I have (over 15 years). But as long as Elestan is going to be participating then it seems fair that a Stardock advocate participate. Would you have preferred the he not have announced up front that he does community management on the side for Stardock?

I bowed out of the thread earlier because it was attracting certain…broken elements to QT3 and I have no intention to try to litigate this here. But that doesn’t mean I’m inclined to let Paul and Fred’s principle public advocate come over to what amounts to my home forum community (QT3) to spread additional FUD. Thrag can do that well enough on his own but at least he’s been here 13 years.

And as always, people who want to see Stardock’s point of view (since Thrag asked a bunch of questions) you can read Star Control : Official Forums from Stardock Entertainment : Developers of Star Control: Origins and the vigorous debate that follows.

828

So are you accusing Elestan of being in the employ or under the direction of Paul and Fred? I just want to be clear about what you are saying here.

830

Since you are here, can you clarify as to your personal knowledge of whether Paul and Fred were the sole creators? You have claimed to have recently found out they weren’t. Is Is this your actual position? When did you first become aware they were not the sole creators?

831

I’ll refer to you what i just wrote:

Unless you are suggesting that Rhonin’s biases automatically discredit his opinion, I am not seeing how me pointing out Elestan’s biases discredit his. Rhonin is just as free to speak his opinions. It’s not like there’s some PR apparatus.

These questions and much more have been answered in great detail here: Star Control : Official Forums from Stardock Entertainment : Developers of Star Control: Origins

832

And I will again ask for clarification.

833

Dear Brad: I don’t care.

835

Stop referring to your PR document. It’s a simple question. Don’t dodge.

Is indeed your position that you thought previously that they were the sole creators and only recently became aware that they weren’t?

When did you first become aware that P&F weren’t the sole creators of SC1 and SC2?